“Good day, Victor,” said Mathieu, “are you well?”

“Oh, I’m no longer young, Monsieur Froment,” the other replied.  “I shall soon have to look somewhere for a hole to lie in.  Still, I hope it won’t be under an omnibus.”

He alluded to the death of his father, who had finally been picked up under an omnibus in the Rue de Grenelle, with his skull split and both legs broken.

“But after all,” resumed Victor, “one may as well die that way as any other!  It’s even quicker.  The old man was lucky in having Norine and Cecile to look after him.  If it hadn’t been for them, it’s starvation that would have killed him, not an omnibus.”

Mathieu interrupted.  “Are Norine and Cecile well?” he asked.

“Yes, Monsieur Froment.  Leastways, as far as I know, for, as you can understand, we don’t often see one another.  Them and me, that’s about all that’s left out of our lot; for Irma won’t have anything more to do with us since she’s become one of the toffs.  Euphrasie was lucky enough to die, and that brigand Alfred disappeared, which was real relief, I assure you; for I feared that I should be seeing him at the galleys.  And I was really pleased when I had some news of Norine and Cecile lately.  Norine is older than I am, you know; she will soon be sixty.  But she was always strong, and her boy, it seems, looks after her.  Both she and Cecile still work; yes, Cecile still lives on, though one used to think that a fillip would have killed her.  It’s a pretty home, that one of theirs; two mothers for a big lad of whom they’ve made a decent fellow.”

Mathieu nodded approvingly, and then remarked:  “But you yourself, Victor, had boys and girls who must now in their turn be fathers and mothers.”

The old workman waved his hand vaguely.

“Yes,” said he, “I had eight, one more than my father.  They’ve all gone off, and they are fathers and mothers in their turn, as you say, Monsieur Froment.  It’s all chance, you know; one has to live.  There are some of them who certainly don’t eat white bread, ah! that they don’t.  And the question is whether, when my arms fail me, I shall find one to take me in, as Norine and Cecile took my father.  But when everything’s said, what can you expect?  It’s all seed of poverty, it can’t grow well, or yield anything good.”

For a moment he remained silent; then resuming his walk towards the works, with bent, weary back and hanging hands, dented by toil, he said:  “Au revoir, Monsieur Froment.”

“Au revoir, Victor,” Mathieu answered in a kindly tone.

Having given his orders, Denis now came to join his father, and proposed to him that they should go on foot to the Avenue d’Antin.  On the way he warned him that they would certainly find Ambroise alone, for his wife and four children were still at Dieppe, where, indeed, the two sisters-in-law, Andree and Marthe, had spent the season together.